"Non habit forming morphine appears to be a latter day Philosopher's stone" -WSB, Letter from a master addict to dangerous drugs

From todays newspaper:

"A painkiller has been discovered that is stronger than morphine without being addictive or as deadly.
The compound, PZM21, does not cause respiratory suppresion US researchers say."

And online:

An international team of researchers — led by scientists at UC San Francisco, Stanford University, the University of North Carolina (UNC), and the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany — has developed a new opioid drug candidate that blocks pain without triggering the dangerous side effects of current prescription painkillers. Their secret? Starting from scratch — with computational techniques that let them explore more than four trillion different chemical interactions.

In a new study — published online Aug. 17, 2016, in Nature — the researchers used the newly deciphered atomic structure of the brain’s “morphine receptor” to custom-engineer a novel drug candidate that blocked pain as effectively as morphine in mouse experiments, but did not share the potentially deadly side effects typical of opioid drugs. In particular, the new drug did not interfere with breathing — the main cause of death in overdoses of prescription painkillers as well as street narcotics like heroin — or cause constipation, another common opioid side effect. The new drug also appears to side-step the brain’s dopamine-driven addiction circuitry and did not cause drug-seeking behavior in mice.

More work is needed to establish that the newly formulated compound is truly non-addictive and to confirm that it is as safe and effective in humans as it is in rodents, the authors say. But if the findings are borne out, they could transform the fight against the ongoing epidemic of prescription painkiller addiction.